Rain Man II

Monday, March 6, 2000 | 10:27 a.m.

Jeff Burton admits to having a run of good fortune when it comes to being in the right place at the right time in rain-plagued races.

Just don't use the term "fluke" to describe his win in Sunday's rain-shortened NASCAR Winston Cup CarsDirect.com 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

"The fastest car won the race," Burton said after putting his Exide Batteries Ford in the lead 10 laps before the second rain delay that ultimately ended the race after 148 of the scheduled 267 laps.

"I was sitting in the fastest car that was on the race track," Burton said. "The thing was faster than everybody else and I just tried to use my head and not get in any bad situations."

The win, which also netted Burton a million-dollar bonus from series sponsor Winston, was Burton's third in a rain-shortened race since last March 21.

"It has been like that lately and we'll take bizarre finishes as long as we keep coming out on top," Burton said. "The key is putting yourself in position and we seem to have ourselves in the right place at the right time. That'll turn around on us one day, but we're going to take advantage of it while we can.

"The rain certainly made it easier for us, but it would have been hard to beat us regardless had we made the right decisions and kept making the car better. Because I can assure you that Mark (Martin) and Tony Stewart and all those guys, they were going to make their cars better and we were going to have to keep working and making ours better."

Burton, who started 11th, raced to the lead following the first of two rain-induced caution periods. Burton's crew chief, Frank Stoddard, made what proved to be a crucial decision to bring Burton in for four tires on lap 95 in the hope that the race would be called after the race had become official at 134 laps.

"I was fairly certain after the lap-20 caution that this thing was going to end right after the halfway point," Stoddard said. "I felt certain we needed to be in the lead. We weren't going to pit until (80 laps after the first caution) and the fifth-, sixth- and seventh-place cars started to come in, so we came in early.

"If I had felt like the race was going to go the full distance, I would have stayed out and stayed within our fuel mileage window, but I didn't want to lose Jeff any time on the race track so we came in and got four tires as soon as we could."

Martin, who finished third, said he wasn't aware that a second rain shower was imminent.

"We had a good shot at it, but I didn't know it was going to rain," Martin said. "I would have tried a little harder to keep the lead, but I didn't and Jeff was fast and that's probably how it should have played out.

"His car was quicker at the time and my car had been fast and was starting to give up."

Stoddard was asked how he could be so sure the race would be stopped shortly after the halfway point when his Roush Racing teammates apparently weren't as convinced.

"That's pretty simple," Stoddard said. "I'm young and inexperienced and I don't know any better. Jimmy (Fennig, Martin's crew chief) and Mark, they know more about it than I do most of the time ... we just kept watching the radar and it was a fact that the radar showed it was going to rain again."

Burton also said he didn't think the rain would come as soon as it did.

"When I was running and Frank kept telling me we need to lead this thing, I'm looking in turn two and it doesn't look that bad to me," he said. "I'm seeing scattered clouds, but I knew (my crew members) were looking at the radar.

"There was a lot of urgency to lead halfway and beyond halfway because we have been involved in rain-shortened races and have won them."

The rain deprived the estimated 130,000 fans of what was shaping up to be the best race of the young season. Bill Elliott charged from 39th to fourth when the second caution came out; Tony Stewart came from 16th to second; Dale Earnhardt raced from 33rd to eighth; and rookie Dale Earnhardt Jr. led four times for 42 laps before slipping back to 10th.

There were 13 lead changes among seven drivers in the race, with Burton leading three times for 56 laps.

Pole-sitter Ricky Rudd led the first lap, but battled an ill-handling car from the start and quickly fell off the place. Rudd finished 12th.

"I thought the rain was hitting the windshield pretty good and the last thing I wanted to do was spin out in front of everybody on the pole and take myself out of the race," Rudd said. "The car got extremely loose and started burning the right rear tire off the car, so if I would have kept on driving it, we would have been getting lapped."

Burton, who notched the 500th win for Ford in the Winston Cup Series, gave team owner Jack Roush his third win in as many Cup races at LVMS; Martin won the inaugural race in 1998 and Burton has captured the past two races on the 1.5-mile superspeedway.

"Mark and Jeff are really good at these intermediate-size tracks and they're also really good at sorting their cars out," Roush said. "When we went to California (Speedway) the first time, (New Hampshire International Speedway) the first time and, of course, here, they adapted quicker than most of their contemporaries.

"Everybody else will catch up ... but (Martin and Burton) have got a head start on understanding what to do and it has paid tremendous dividends -- not to mention the fact we have been extremely lucky."

Just don't tell that to Burton.